Elements of Fiction
PLOT The plot is the sequence of events. It has to have a beginning, a middle and an end. It has to build to a climax through rising action. The sequence has to be connected through cause and effect. For more and better information see what Aristotle has to say.
SETTING
The setting of the story is the time and place the background against which the story takes place.
CHARACTER The characters in a story are the people who experience the events of the plot. Every story you read will have characters. The main character will be the protagonist. The protagonist is the character who experiences the main conflict or problem in the plot. This character may be dynamic or static. A dynamic character is one who changes during the course of the story. Most protagonists are dynamic. A static character doesn't change during the story. Characters in the story who are static often help to develop the main character to provide them with the opportunity to change. The antagonist is the character in the story who plays a major role in the plot and helps create and develop the main character. The antagonist may be an opposing force to the protagonist.
CONFLICT The conflict of a story is a problem in the story. It can be internal or external.An internal conflict is a conflict within one person. Normally when you feel guilty about something you did, or angry with yourself. An external conflict is when the conflict is within 2 or more people. Normally an argument. ex. Man vs. Man Man vs. Nature Man vs. Himself Man vs. Society Man vs. Supernatural Man vs. Destiny
SYMBOL A symbol is a person, place, or thing comes to represent an abstract idea or concept , it is anything that stands for something beyond itself.
POINT OF VIEW
Point of View is the “narrative point of view,” how the story is told—more specifically, who tells it.
There are two distinctly different types of point of view and each of those two types has two variations.
In the First Person point of view, the story is told by a character within the story, a character using the first person pronoun, I.
If the narrator is the main character, the point of view is first person protagonist. Mark Twain lets Huck Finn narrate his own story in this point of view.
If the narrator is a secondary character, the point of view is first person observer. Arthur Conan Doyle lets Sherlock Holmes’ friend Dr. Watson tell the Sherlock Holmes story. Doyle frequently gets credit for telling detective stories this way, but Edgar Allan Poe perfected the technique half a century earlier.
In the Third Person point of view, the story is not told by a character but by an “invisible author,” using the third person pronoun (he, she, or it) to tell the story. Instead of Huck Finn speaking directly to us, “My name’s Huckleberry Finn” and telling us “I killed a pig and spread the blood around so people would think I’d been killed”, the third person narrator would say: He killed a pig and spread the blood…..
If the third person narrator gives us the thoughts of characters (He wondered where he’d lost his baseball glove), then he is a third person omniscient (all knowing) narrator.
If the third person narrator only gives us information which could be recorded by a camera and microphone (no thoughts), then he is a third person dramatic narrator.
In summary, then, here are the types of point of view:
First Person Narrator
Protagonist
Observer
Third Person Narrator
Omniscient
Dramatic
Different points of view can emphasize different things. A first person protagonist narrator would give us access to the thoughts of the main character. If the author doesn’t want us to have that access, he could use the first person observer, for example, or the third person dramatic.
THEME Is the central message of a literary work. It is not the same as a subject, which can be expressed in
a word or two: courage, survival, war, pride, etc. The theme is the idea the author wishes to convey about
that subject.